The shocking testimony of a Colombian who survived human trafficking in Mexico: «A friend got me deceived»

He was 22 years old, studied marketing and worked selling holiday plans, but decided to pause everything in order to take an opportunity that life was putting in front of him.

By BBC World

Her friend Milena had achieved a job in Cancun, more than 2,000 kilometers from her home in Bogotá.

But what lived since he got out of that plane were the darkest months of his life and an experience that today, 8 years later, does not stop hurting him.

Alison was the victim of a network of people for sexual exploitation, a phenomenon that, according to United Nations estimates and the Walk Free Foundation, affects more than 6 million people in the world.

After years of remaining silent, Alison decided to tell his story in the podcast you can. Subsequently, he spoke with BBC Mundo about what he lived when he fell into the hands of a sophisticated international criminal network that exploded it sexually for months.

What follows is your testimony in the first person.

Since I have memories, my house was at war.

My mom was a domestic employee. I worked a lot, because it was always the one that supplied absolutely all the needs of the house.

My dad was present, but I would have loved it. He was abuser and vague. He never worked. All he did was drink and hit us.

Getting to my house was almost always receiving a blow or a bad word. If I locked me in my room, I was beginning to listen to how the fight began to climb to the point where I had to go to intervene to defend my mother.

Then, I grew up with great frustration for living in that home without resources and full of traumatic memories.

All I wanted was to run, get out of there. I wanted a different future, a path that would allow me to leave and take my mother.

When I entered college, I made a friend named Luisa and she introduced me to Milena. The three of us became very close.

I was going to eat at their house, they came to mine, we studied together and occasionally went out to have a beer.

Until one day Milena told us to go to Mexico. A person who had met at his work had offered him a job in Cancun.

Milena left, but we are still in permanent contact. He told us that his work was easy and well paid, and even showed us the restaurant per video call.

I longed for such an opportunity. With what I earned in my work, I had to choose between paying the semester of university and eating.

So, as we were such good friends, Milena said she was going to talk to her boss to see if there was the possibility that we were, Luisa and I, to work there too.

This was how the opportunity came to me.

The trip

A few days later, I was already in contact with the boss of Milena and her secretary planning my trip.

My plan was to save enough to pay the next semester of the University and return to Colombia.

They offered to lend me money to get my passport and buy the plane ticket.

I assumed that so much generosity was because I was a friend of Milena and she got along very well with her boss. This works in Colombia: if you are a friend of the right person, you have privileges.

They explained in detail what I had to do when you arrived in Cancun. I had to go through filter number 1 and say that I was on vacation for a week.

I decided to go without telling anyone. My mother was always extremely overprotective, so I knew I wasn’t going to understand.

I went through the airport and picked me up a fat guy and not very friendly. They told him a seal.

Foca took me to the house where I was going to stay. They had also offered to give me lodging.

The house was in a closed street that only residents could access. It was far and isolated from the others.

There he received another Colombian woman, who was very warm with me. He was called Angelica and was in charge of caring for the house and the people who lived there.

Everything seemed to be marching well, so much that I called my mother. I told him that he was in Mexico and that he was going to spend time working there.

The next day, a man who did not know to talk to me arrived, and handed me the contract he had to sign.

The contract established that I acquired a debt to the company for which I was going to work from 170,000 Mexican pesos (about US $ 8,300) for the process of passport and flights.

They would stay with my passport until the total debt came out.

I will not lie. I didn’t sit down to read that word word for word. Nor did I analyze at any time that they had lent me all that money.

What I thought was that they were giving me a house, food, work and had taken me to Mexico. I didn’t want to be malpidished.

According to the calculations I had in my head and what I had talked to Milena, in less than 6 months I would have finished paying the debt and the whole salary was going to be for me.

The restaurant

They told me that the place where I was going to work had not yet opened.

Then, they took me where my friend Milena was working, who was the same restaurant I had seen by video call. It was in the bullring.

I would never have imagined that in such a busy place by families and tourists something weird was happening, and less considering that it had been thanks to my friend was there.

When they got there, they gave me a white and tight dress that I had to put on.

It was horrible, but I thought it was the typical restaurant with a striking uniform, or that perhaps it was because of the heat.

All that told me to not feel distressed, but since I took my passport, an discomfort had begun to accumulate in me, a feeling that something was not quite right.

In the restaurant nobody told me what I had to do.

I was confused for a while, but the hours began to pass and I realized that my companions sat on the table with the customers and, after a while, they left with them from the restaurant. There I realized what work was.

I began to investigate more and explained to me: «Here what we have to do is sit with a client. You take care that this person will take you from the restaurant to a company service or a sexual service ».

«Then, the customer goes and pays in the box for the time he wants with you. A restaurant driver takes them to another place, which is one of the owners. There you do your service, meet your time, and the driver returns you to the restaurant ».

The alcohol that the client consumed in the restaurant and what he would pay for the «services» was the only way to decrease the debt.

Read more in BBC World

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